Should College Students Be Allowed In Public Schools?

Going into my junior year also means going into the year of college preparation. Part of that preparation includes tightening up the security on all of my social media accounts, even deleting some of them. As it is a very apparent fact that the universities I research online are going to look me up too. Although this idea of college admission officers basically stalking me on the Internet is quite frightening, I don’t blame them. Wherever I end up is most likely where I'm going to stay for four years and would continue to represent them as an alumna. While students deserve to have their social lives to be private, whatever they display online without taking security precaution should be free for college admission officers to view, which they should as the
prospective students will be soon a part of their school. My friends and I often use social media to either amplify the best parts of our lives or to express our humor, no matter how strange. Even though it's being posted to the World Wide Web, we are capable enough to censor and privatize a lot of what we post. Although today’s societies students post their entire lives on social media platforms, there are many ways to protect their personal information. Therefore, what is freely open to the public, should also be open to college admission officers. If a school looks into a student who is too stupid to turn on their privacy filters, then they are probably too stupid to go there. As sharing things online become easier, increasing privacy does too. There are many tools and ways students can censor themselves that are being developed at the same time as the next media platform. Programs, like The Social U, exist where social media users can clean out and filter what they post in order to censor the good, the bad, and the ugly that admission officers would be able to view if they didn't (Teare). Most often times, social platforms allow people to block, restrict, or hide how much other people can see their profile. So, whatever students don't want schools to see, they can hide. And, whatever they don’t hide, schools want to see. People should also take special precaution into posting photos or stories that require a context, as they often can be taken the wrong way. College admission officers don’t know the jokes between friends and can easily misinterpret a harmless post. So, it’s up to the student to, “figure out how to navigate a networked world in which collapsed contexts and imagined audiences are par for the coarse,” (Boyd). While it is typical to find out what a person is doing, where they are, and what they are like just from their profile, their intentions are a little harder to research into. Colleges have the right to public information, so what students don’t protect, is free for officers to interpret for themselves. Not only should schools be looking into their students, but they should also do thorough research.
When looking into prospective students, admission officers should highly consider looking them up online, as they will be spending their next two to four years on the campus that they will have to represent. Even after that, people continue to hold value to where they studied at for the rest of their lives. In 2016, 40% of admission officers visited prospective students’ social media pages, but that number should really be 100% (Mulhere). The 40% who already looked up applicants do so, “to protect their school, its reputation, and to avoid potential bad apples from spoiling their brand,” (Davich). The students who attend these schools are the examples for future classes to look at and if they see people who aren’t up to their standards, they are going to look someplace else. Teens know that their “Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter persona reflects on their actual personality,” and schools should know that too (Mulhere). No one wants to end up somewhere where rapists, pranksters, and delinquents go to either. Peeking into online profiles can reveal just a little more into the character of potential
students. College admission officers have one job, to look into a student’s application and see if they have the right grades and personality to go to their school. Prospective students have one job, to sell themselves to the best school they can get into. When it comes to social media what the teen is selling can easily be revealed as a sham. So, it’s up to the student to censor what they put online and it’s up to the school to censor who they accept.